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TPP trade negotiations: from Chicago to Dallas to San Diego

Posted Jun. 15, 2012 / Posted by: Bill Waren

“There’s no reason in the world why trade agreements can’t be written that create a more just and sustainable world.” -- Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, TPP Labor Day Rally, Chicago, September 5, 2011.

Friends of the Earth is a leading advocate calling attention to international trade and investment agreements, such as the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement now under negotiation, that undermine environmental protection.

For the past year, Friends of the Earth has stepped to the forefront at TPP negotiations. We are letting the public and the negotiators know about the environmental threat posed by the proposed agreement among nine Pacific nations. We are documenting the ways in which the TPP trade deal would subvert environmental priorities, such as climate change measures and regulation of mining, land use, and bio-technology. For example, we have stoked up opposition, particularly internationally, against the TPP investment chapter that would allow global corporations to bring claims for money damages before business-friendly, international tribunals in compensation for the cost of complying with environmental regulations.

Chicago: put people first

It was Labor Day, 5 September 2011, in Chicago. As representatives from the United States and eight other Pacific countries gathered in the Chicago Hilton hotel for negotiations starting the next day on a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, we joined activists from environmental, labor and community organizations at the corner of Columbus and Balbo in Grant Park to demand a fair deal or no deal in the TPP talks.

The TPP would be a platform for economic integration and government deregulation for nations surrounding the Pacific. The negotiations now include the United States, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as the non-democratic governments of Brunei and Vietnam. In the near future, the TPP talks may very well be officially expanded to include Japan, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and others. This potentially makes the TPP as important as the EU common market in terms of its economic heft, and a big hazard to the environment.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, spoke at the Grant Park rally. Jerry Greenfield delivered a clear message,”We encourage trade negotiators to create an agreement that works for working people, farmers, and the environment in all countries.” Ben Cohen agreed, “We want an agreement that puts people first.”

Lauren Cumbia, from Stand Up! Chicago, a coalition of community groups, said, “big banks and corporations have had a chance to see the draft trade agreements and give input while the rest of us are being left in the dark. We’re all here to demand an agreement that puts families first instead of corporations.”

Especially given that it was Labor Day, worker rights issues were highlighted at the rally. As Tom Balanoff from the Service Employees International Union told the 800 or so people gathered in Grant Park, “Hundreds of thousands of workers here in Chicago and all over the Midwest are out of jobs because of bad trade agreements like NAFTA that did so much to push down the value of people’s labor in this country,” and to push down “workers ability to raise their standards everywhere,”

The next day, just before Ben and Jerry attempted to deliver 20,000 postcards demanding that the TPP negotiators deliver a fair deal, a press conference was held in front of the Hilton. I told the assembled reporters, “If corporate lobbyists get their way, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact will be a clone of the failed NAFTA model, empowering multinational corporations to run roughshod over environmental and public health protections.”

Later in the week, we participated in a teach-in at Roosevelt University and made key contacts with U.S. and international activists, as well as university researchers from the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. We had conversations about the TPP investment chapter with Australian and U.S. negotiators. The Australians seemed to like our message; the U.S. team did not.

Friends of the Earth allies in Malaysia, Chile, Australia and New Zealand also sent letters to their trade ministries demanding an open process that protects the public interest from the behind-the-scenes influence of corporate lobbyists.

Kuala Lumpur: what about the 99%?

The next set of TPP negotiations was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from December 5 to 9, 2011. Malaysian civil society organized a Parallel People’s Conference in advance of the negotiations to highlight the risks posed by the TPP: “It will make it harder for farmers and manufacturing workers to make a living. It will make medicines and books more expensive for all Malaysians. It will make it harder for the government to regulate foreign companies in the interests of the 99% of Malaysians, including environmental and public health regulations.”

Beverley Hills: access to medicines and patents on plants and animals

TPP negotiators returned to the United States from January 31 to February 3 for private meetings in southern California to hammer out the details on the intellectual property chapter, among other issues. Trade negotiators met behind closed doors in luxury hotel rooms in Beverly Hills and La Jolla for these less formal “inter-sessional” talks. Controversy arose at the Beverly Hills site when a hotel cancelled a conference room reservation for public interest groups allegedly under pressure from negotiators.

Friends of the Earth let the negotiators and our local activists know that the ability of governments to implement public policies designed to protect access to medicines must be preserved and the dangerous trend toward patenting biological and genetic materials must be slowed. Both issues would be greatly impacted by the intellectual property chapter of the TPP.

The leaked version of the TPP intellectual property chapter provides substantial protections for corporate patents on plant and animal life. Most people are shocked to learn that 20 percent of the human genome has been patented by corporations and scientists, granting companies ownership and sole access to these building blocks of life. Likewise, Friends of the Earth is worried about the implications of the TPP intellectual property chapter for so-called bio-piracy, especially in the form of corporate appropriation of natural biological materials, associated genes and traits, and the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples.

With respect to access to medicines and the TPP intellectual property chapter, Adam Bandt, a Green Party member of the Australian parliament, sums it up neatly, “Last year there was a leak of the draft US chapter regarding how intellectual property would be regulated under the [TPP] agreement - it contains some worrying proposals. The changes being proposed by the US would favour big pharmaceutical companies. Patents would be stronger and longer; profits would be bigger.”

Advocates for internet freedom expressed concern that the U.S. may be trying to incorporate language into the IP chapter that favors corporate interests and could result in harsh enforcement action against internet users. This is similar to the controversies that have dogged the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) introduced in the U.S. Congress and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which raised a firestorm of opposition in Europe.

We met privately three times with Australian negotiators, and had similar lengthy private meetings with negotiators from Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, and Chile. On May 12, Stakeholders Day, Friends of the Earth staff almost ran out of copies of the four TPP issue briefs, and talked in a more public setting to negotiators from Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Malaysia, and the U.S.

Friends of the Earth officially co-sponsored a mass rally in opposition to the TPP, on Saturday the 12th. The next day, we questioned the delegation leaders of the nine parties at a roundtable with stakeholders about bias in the investment chapter.

We also attended a teach-in sponsored by the Texas Fair Trade Campaign and Dallas community organizations, as well as a reception sponsored by the corporate lobbyists that was disrupted by Occupy Dallas activists who gave the Corporate Power Tool Award to negotiators. .

The topic of the luncheon discussion in Dallas is of overwhelming importance to environmentalists. The U.S. proposal for a TPP investment chapter would create a separate “court” for capital. Foreign investors could bypass domestic courts and bring suit before special international tribunals designed to encourage international investment. They could seek awards of money damages, of unlimited size, in compensation for the cost of complying with environmental and other public interest regulations. They could even seek compensation for lost future profits.

Friends of the Earth is committed to the fight for environmental protection and social justice in international trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership. It’s one of the toughest fights to take on. We are up against powerful global corporations with vast financial resources and political influence. Victory will not come today or tomorrow but only after months or years of struggle. Why not take on smaller, easier to win environmental issues, skeptics might ask.

"What is the global economy for? Creating endless corporate profits? Or serving people equitably around the world as they pursue meaningful and prosperous lives?

The answer is clear to us: it’s people, not merely profits. But the last few decades, the global economy has been warped through national policies and trade agreements into a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Current global trade rules make it easy for corporations to move wherever labor is cheapest and environmental protections weakest. Global trade rules can undermine local laws, making it hard for workers to organize and difficult to ensure the safety of imported foods and other products. They also gut the policies that developing countries use to fight hunger and ensure food security.

The point is that the global economy is not a free market- it’s an unfair market with big winners and big losers. And, there is a better way, if we are willing to embrace it."